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Comment by lolomghax

Just to put it in perspective.

A death knight blood tank with improved Death strike and 60k health will heal himself for 9k with Death strike, and thus place a 4.5k shield on himself with this.Mastery purely increases the potency of the shield, not the heal itself.

So if for example you had 100 mastery, and this would add 40% power to the shield your Death Strike would still heal for 9k but now shield you for 6.3k.

A very powerful *block-like* effect that will scale hugely.

Note that both Stamina and Mastery both increase the power of this tanking tool.

Comment by mak484

I have made broken down all of the current masteries into two categories: unique, interesting masteries and flat bonus masteries.

Comment by Seref

Comment by zsxking

Comment by Balstradan

Comment by butcher098

You know, when I first saw this mastery I was hoping it would be some form of.. Shield for graphical effects. But currently on Live server, with full graphics going on, its just a regular buff :(

Comment by malconstant

The mastery % does not cap out at 100%, so your shields can be arbitrarily large (depending on what mastery and stamina you can achieve). Currently on my dk tank my shield gives 125% of the amount DS heals through reforging. The absolute max attainable through reforging pre-Cata is likely around 135-140%.

The additional % heal from Improved Death Strike (45% with 3/3) only works for the non-minimum (10%) heals.

The ICC 30% buff only affects the healing component of DS, it does not also buff the absorb.

So currently, in ICC, with extensive reforging, a 90k hp tank should get a minimum 9k heal with a 12k bubble (more if at least 30k damage has been sustained over the previous 5 seconds).

And that's just the minimum. Say you're solo tanking LK, after sustaining a Soul Reaper and 5 seconds of super hasted damage for a maximum of around 200k total damage. A well-placed DS could get up to a 120k bubble on you (60k for the initial 30% heal, plus 20k for icc heal buff plus 15k for having 125% mastery plus 25k for the Imp DS talent). Of course, you'd probably rather pop cooldowns to diminish the incoming damage, and have a bubble absorb some of that, this is just trying to get the theoretical max out of things.

For a more general calculation, but still only for the ICC buff, with 125% mastery, for any amount of damage taken over the preceding 5 seconds -- so long as it's great enough to exceed 35% of your total hp -- the heal will be for 50% of the damage taken, and the bubble will be for 60% of the damage taken (the difference between the min-max values is the whether or not Imp DS gets fixed).

TL;DR: this mastery is amazing. Reforge every ounce you can to get it.

Comment by slayer50513

This can be well abused. Reforging gear to get the most mastery and stamina possible can result in 40k+ HP and 116% (or more) shield bonus. Since death strike gives 10% of your base health or higher, this means a 4k heal and 4600 shield at 40k health. Furthermore, you can stack Vampiric Blood and Glyph of Vampiric Blood which will give you +40% healing. This means that your heal will now be 5600 and your shield 6496. Even better still is Improved Death Strike which brings the total to a whopping 8120+ heal and 9419+ shield.I'm sure I've messed up somewhere in there, but the point is that you can actually put yourself on the HPS+guessed absorbs meter.

Comment by Dangeren

Only absorbs physical damage, which is kind of disappointing considering the vague wording on the talent window makes it sound like Blood Shield would absorb all forms of damage.

Comment by DarklingThrush

I have gotten blood shields in excess of 20k with this, several times while tanking two enraged shambling horrors in LK fight (my guild doesn't bother tranq'ing them anymore - "they don't do anything to you!") and again while tanking Algalon. There is a new addon for tracking the strength of your shield while in combat and even forcasting the strength of a shield so you can best time Death Strike. This mastery is my favorite in the game atm.

Comment by gremlinoutcast

Before i say my piece, I'd like to mention I am no expert in the mechanics or mathematics involved in getting the value for Blood Shield. This is just from my own experience.

I recently downloaded an add on called Blood Shield Tracker (Curse.com). This add on will tell you the possible heal you will get upon Death Striking and the amount of health you're shielded for with Blood Shield. With my Mastery at 91% currently, I saw my Blood Shield activate for nearly 60k health on a few Death Strikes. Unfortunately I reset my recount before I remembered to look at my heals/absorbs. One of my friends said I had around 3k heals.

Comment by costilla

I have one question , does Glyphs of Deathstrike also helps making bigger Blood shields? this will be great but i havent read anything about this and none is taking this glyph, thats why i was wondering if it helps or not.

Comment by bkevol

so say you cast death strike and get a 20k shield. 5 secs later you cast another death strike and get a new blood shield.

since death strike heals you for a % of the damage taken in the previous 5 seconds, does it count the Aborbed damage ? Or does it subtract 20k or whatever because that damage was absorbed?

Comment by Dorleron

So, lets say a Death Knight has 150k HP with some buffs or something. Assuming Death Strike heals them for a minimum of 10% of their health that is 15,000 health healed AND with no additional mastery, a 7,500 bubble, adding up to a total of 22,500 extra damage they can take without dying. Of course they can use this immediately again after the bubble wears off, for another 15,000 health healed and a 7,500 bubble for another 22,500 extra damage. Making a grand total of 45,000 damage extra they can take.

Whereas a Bear's Mastery: 50% chance from a critical hit to reduce damage taken by 35% of the player's attack power.So at the moment lets say a good bear has 30% critical hit chance, 11k attack power, and 150k HP. They get a critical hit however mastery doesn't activate, so they just get the heal from leader of the pack for a whopping 6,000 health (can not activate more then once every 6 seconds) with no damage absorbed. You get another critical hit in the same 5 seconds mastery activates this time. Now lets pretend you have no mastery rating at all so you just get 35% of your attack power so you get a whopping: 3850 bubble basically making a bear in this scenario take a possible extra damage of 9850.

Granted this is just a worst case scenario of the mastery activating but please compare, a Death Knight can take an extra 30,000 physical damage or Caster damage, and 15,000 pure physical damage. Whereas a bear can take: 9850 extra damage. Again, this is just a worst case scenario if the mastery occurs for a bear, but a Death Knights is guaranteed, and look at how much better it is. Remember, a Death Knight can absorb 45,000 damage in just 10 seconds, whereas a Bear if mastery worked out perfectly and activated on every global cool down, in 10 seconds we could take an extra 35,100 damage or so. still 9,900 damage less then a Death Knight, and it will often not happen as its a 50% chance from a critical hit, so even if a bear had 50% critical chance, its only a 25% chance of activating on a very basic level :(

Also I might add that in Icecrown Citadel, a Death Knight with 150k HP would have around 180k health, and could likely keep up with healing themselves in it now for quite a bit ;D

Comment by dav36van

man, this mastery made me so super happy that I picked my death knight to level through cata as my new tank instead of my druid, pally or warrior (I'm a tank altaholic).

EDIT: and in PvE this mastery is even more awesome since the majority of tank damage is almost always melee. and you still have all the above abilities just in case things are getting really ridiculous with mob casters.

Comment by Sandskimmer

Blood Shield can currently stack. I have been hearing people talking about "wasting" Death Strike hits by using the ability twice in a row, so suck it. You should, of course, still use Death Strike tactically, but you are not overwriting your first Blood Shield by hitting Death Strike twice in a row.

While testing if the shield stacked I thought it would be fun to see how big I could get my Blood Shield. It turns out that there is a cap on the size of the shield. That cap is your maximum health.

Comment by RandomVillain

I guess this is why Blood DK's are so ridiculous to bring down in PVP nowadays?

Comment by Alasur

Tried to have a little fun with the stacking effect from this. It seems the shields Maximum cap is 100% of your Max HP. Seems Blizzard thought ahead with this so we wont be seeing any Reckoning Bomb level Events happening with this.

Comment by Andore

Now we can easily get into Dungeon/RDF with 1 DK tanker and 4 DPS. :D

Comment by Wulfric11

Patch 4.1Blood shield now only works in blood presence.

This ruins a lot for solo-ers out there, the glyph that gave death strike a healing bonus of 15% of your maximum hp while in frost or unholy presence, is now up for debate on weather to stay in blood presence and receive the blood shield bonus and ignore the glyph, or to keep the glyph and receive the 15% healing bonus. This will take some testing.

They just made soloing Kael'thas that little bit harder.

once again: THANKS BLIZZARD! xD

Comment by Reebs

^^^ Exactly what he said...

Thanks Blizz for nerfing the super cool Mastery that made DKs WANT to tank again.

I have 160K HP now and stacking this shield made me nearly invincible to non casters... Im sure some of you have heard of DKs solo crash an Alli party in TB and walk away with the capped flag... its epic.

Now... being stuck in Blood Presence in order to do that is nearly impossible... you just can't push out enough DPS for it.

I just dont get why we keep getting the goods taken back...? We lost 20% of our armor buff in 4.06, and now this... c'mon im about to stop tanking and just level toons and profs...

So to summarize your argument....

Dear Blizz you suck why can't I solo 5 people as a 1 dk tank in pvp?11! It's totally lame that I can't do the damage of 2 dps while having the durability of a pvp geared tank with great self healz! This is obviously totally unfair now I can't tank too, because obviously being unkillable and doing crazy damage in pvp = balanced and relative to pve!111! RUINED FOREVAR.

Comment by Sarge517

Comment by mmomeltingpot

Blood Shield is particularly useful for encounters like Shannox. You can take far more stacks of Jagged Tear than you would otherwise be able to stand.

Comment by Rizzatto

This is such a cool mastery. I just started questing in hyjal and because of this, I'm able to do most of my questing without even losing 5% of my total hp! Just keep the shield up along with the self healing that blood dk's are known for and you'll breeze through so much.

Comment by Rhinemonster

Let's see I'm thinking I have around 19 mastery, so that translates to...19x6.25 and that gives me the percentage benefit of 118.75%, but if it was combined with the original 50%, I should come out with 168.75% and that's just not the case... I think my Character Pane says I have around 100-114% Blood Shield...

Sigh... Blizzard and numbers don't mix

Comment by Rhinemonster

Wait hold up on my last comment, there is NO starting boost with this mastery?

So 118.75% were the right numbers

Comment by Bladedknights

the blood shield caps at your current max hp

Comment by Degeh

This talent? (Mastery whatever) is very unique. I like unique and i can safely say i have found a crack in the mechanics that will be lost forever. But i had fun with it time to move on and leave before blizzard makes me kill my own faction leader and infest the place with soft creatures or worse, let our companions battle each other. No, blizzard would never do that, to me!

Blood shield does not absorb Magic.I believe you have another spell called Anti-Magic Shell/Zone for that sole purpose.Nonetheless this procs per spell and thus every time you cast a certain spell you get this shield.And that spell happens to deal Damage and also Heals you. It's like the paladin class (A what?) crushed into one ball of awesomeness. If only there was a way to make you cast this faster, oh wait there totally are ways of doing such a unthinkable feat. It is only not being done because of stereotypes and the fact 58% does not think. DAMN IT CRYERS Y DONT U THINK BEFORE CRYING

Comment by Alnair

lasts a maximum of 10 seconds, the unused value of an old shield is added to the value of each new shield but the shield can never be value greater than your total health.

However, magic damage taken during a fight does factor into the strength of the healing done by Death Strike (the more damage you take the stronger your death strikes are), as does the stack-value of Scent of Blood, which scales with Haste/Hit/Expertise.

Ideally when ever you can anticipate damage, use Death Strikebefore a predictable physical attack (to put up the shield) and after a predictable magical attack (to heal the damage and increase the value of the next shield.

Comment by Cowworth

This is amazing on fights like Malkorok, since it prioritizes this shield over the Miasma shield (I think) meaning you have 3 times your HP on fights like that, if you are good you can get up to 30-50+ stacks before it really starts to hurt, vengeance still works too so it really makes it worth trying to hold to him for a long time if you want to.

Comment by heartlessnobody

Whoa this also will increase your attack power by 8% in wod... and since blood likes to stack mastery this part will scale as well

Comment by aeregon

As with WoD this mastery has got a big hit.

As it was normal to have 200%+ mastery as blood, it is now hard to achieve 40% or higher.

You still get a shield depending on your heal with death strike.

Before WoDDeath strike would result in high shields when we take loads of damage, as death strike heals were depending on damage taken in the last seconds and because our mastery was very high we gain even more shield.

at the release of WoD:Death strike does not heal depending on damage taken anymore. But the heal scales with attack power. This is now possible because vengance is gone (gain attack power depending on damage taken). But now we don't have that high mastery anymore, so our shields won't be that big.

Tanks now have resolve, that took the place of vengance. This give us increased self heal and absorption depending on the damage taken in the last few seconds. Which caps at 350%.

This changes the amount our mastery works. Because now we have low mastery in our stat list, but during combat it will be multiplied when we heal AND getting shields.

so instead our increased shield will not come from stacking a stat, but from the amount of damage taken.